John Casey:
You have indicated in your curatorial proposal a desire to create a relationship
between contemporary art, the architecture of the airport, and travel which all
seem to point to a certain nostalgia for air travel and even a nostalgia for the
modernist architecture of the Saarineen terminal. You say that you want to revive
an interest in flight. But it seems that this is a particular point in history
where flight cannot be viewed with the same optimism which it stirred from the
time of the Wright brothers on up to the construction of the Saarinen terminal.
It seems that our interest in it should be a guarded interest, not one that necessarily
embraces it. Can you comment on this?

Rachel K. Ward: We are
still at a challenging moment for air travel and this is one of the reasons I
decided to pursue Terminal 5 at this time. It is also just after the first century
of flight. Of course it is not possible to recall the original optimism of flight.
That moment is gone forever but it is always possible to retain an outlook of
possibility. I think that is what brings together air flight, modernism and contemporary
art, each thrive on possibility. Without being sentimental or nostalgic, I want
to respond to the sense of possibility that seems almost inaccessible to us at
this present moment. Air travel, modern architecture and contemporary art share
a certain sense of failed promise but also represent the potential of human will.
We have been describing Terminal 5 as a cornerstone exhibition of the 21st century,
to the shock of many people who consider it a very pretentious statement. However,
we are trying to allow the best of the 20th century to provide a platform for
the best of today. Air flight is the invention of the 20th century and the airport,
particularly Saarinen's, is the masterpiece castle of our historical moment. Therefore
we are honored to join a legacy, not one we are exclusively making but one already
in progress and it is to that which the artists respond.

John Casey:
I agree with you entirely about the necessity to avoid sentimentality and nostalgia.
The exhibition that you have devised seems to be precisely the way to avoid this
because of the fact that it is driven by contemporary art, a practice which still
inhabits the structures, institutions and discursive precedents set by modernism
in the 20th century. At the same time there has been a consistent critical distance
set by both curators and artists in relation to modernism and the icons of modernism,
such as the Saarinen terminal. How has this critical approach affected your approach
to such a sacred modern space as a curator? And do you think the artists consider
themselves as part of this legacy or do they stand in a different critical relation
to both the architectural space and the idea of air travel?

Rachel
K. Ward: I would not agree that curators and artists practice such a critical
distance from modernism, rather I think there is a certain decadence, almost a
lack of awareness or neglect of the institution or gallery space as modern, that
the ideology down to the office aesthetic is still high modernism, still minimal.
But I would say what we are doing by claiming Sarrinen's terminal is taking on
modernism as a scene of art. And Sarinen's space is not sacred necessarily. I
think a museum can be sacred for some people but the terminal is shared space,
social space, and that is also part of what we are trying to accomplish, to open
the doors and prevent it from becoming too precious. The artists each seem
to have an individual relationship to the space. It should be noted that almost
every artist instantly responded positively to the invitation, but each for different
reasons. For some, the dialogue with Saarinen has been extremely important. Dan
Graham for example has recalled his knowledge of Saarinen s mid-western origins.
For other artists its was about the airport as concept. Several artists already
had a project ready for whenever an opportunity at an airport opened up. This
is when I knew the exhibition would be a success, when each of the artists could
understand the significance but each had different expectations and intentions.
The airport seems to be institutional and also governmental and also commercial
and many things at one time permitting a plurality of style. While museums and
galleries rely on a monthly blank slate to permit constant turnover, at the airport
the constant turnover is already built in, it is already part of the scene. And
I suppose I should mention that it just so happens that Saarinen's terminal, already
the symbol of airports, is at an ideal moment to serve as art space. Monumental
and vacant, it communicates the open awe that the best museums strive for.

John Casey: In a sense you have taken a non-space with a specific
function, a distinctly modern function that is often experienced and thought of
as uncomfortable, frustrating and even alienating, and transformed it into a destination,
not only for arriving travelers, but also for people interested in contemporary
art. You mention that it is a governmental space, a space tightly controlled by
strict security measures, yet it has also become a space for relative freedom
- the freedom of the artist to transform the space according to his own measures
and dictate the public encounter. The vacant and monumental qualities of the space
is precisely what museums strive for, yet these qualities have not escaped critique
in the past and still do not. I think these are some of the reasons and paradoxes
that make the show interesting. You have escaped both the gallery and museum as
institutions to create a new social space in an already rigidly controlled social
space. In a sense there is an unmasking and a remaking of the space, but it is
at the same time a space both quite different and quite similar to the typical
to an art setting.

Rachel K. Ward: In some ways the Terminal
5 project has been a tremendous risk for myself as an independent curator and
for each of the artists. I can remember several months into the project Toland
Grinnell suddenly asking if the project would have insurance? It was challenging
to have a person organize a project the scale of a museum without the security
of an institution. At the same time, because the security of an airport is so
excessive, we were forced to answer to a higher power than the museum standard.
Not only did we have to arrange for insurance but insurance with fire and terror
watch and security risks beyond the normal institution. So it was a mix of total
risk and utter safety. In this way I think it does have something to offer
contemporary art. The artist's work should be protected like any valuable but
there is something about providing freedom to an artist that is very exciting.
It doesn't always result in a masterpiece but it is necessary to a larger process
of art itself. Also, I would say your terms unmasking or remaking evoke a
sense of the theatrical. But we are not unmasking it or remaking it, time has
done that already for us. There is no question we have a stage set. The only other
people who have used the terminal since its closure have been film crews. The
Port Authority still calls us "scouts" when we visit the site.

John Casey: When you mention the need to insure the art and arrange
the proper security measures with the Port Authority it reminds me of the concept
of orchestration that you have mentioned before in relation to the vast three
dimensional and global network that composes the space of air travel. Can you
discuss this idea of orchestration not only in the art/performance works, but
also in your own work as a curator for this show beyond merely the arrangement
of insurance? In essence you need to arrange and guarantee the arrival and
departure, not only of the art, but also of an entire curatorial structure which
includes education, performances, visitors, and a gift shop - the complete trappings
of a museum. This also reminds of the structure that you used in curating the
Eispavillion exhibition. Rachel K. Ward: I think there is
something very cinematic to curating. Now that I think of it our sponsoring agency,
the only non-profit that was willing to take the Terminal 5 project was Film-Video
Art, the agency for Jim Jarmusch's and Michael Moore's first projects. They were
the only people who got it - understood what we were really planning or orchestrating.
I suppose that I work on a large scale way planning a project in total with many
different aspects and unique collaborations. I also work with certain artists
because I trust their abilities and what they offer to the overall aim of the
project. It is not like ordering from a catalog, like selecting art that already
exists. That is also curating and orchestrating but a bit too controlled for me.
I like to provide the situation and see what happens. Tobias Wong and Ken
Courtney were both in the Eispavillon project. And what both Tobias and Ken offer
are aspects of a museum but simulations. Ken's poster for Eispavillon was a promotion
of a promotion. It was the best: a sign of labels, brands that had nothing to
do with the content of the exhibition. I loved it and it would have never been
approved by a board of directors of an institution. And now Tobias with the gift
shop is offering something that investigates the whole notion of the commercial
art space. Every museum has a gift shop now. When we did Eispavillon, which is
a tourist attraction, it came with a gift shop already there so we used it and
now the airport - it has one built in too. Even hospitals have gift shops. They
are everywhere and totally the kind of place to investigate aesthetics and exchange.
In many ways Tobias and I have discussed how it is a dream project to have an
empty shop space to respond to aesthetically and ideologically but it is also
very difficult.

John Casey: I am quite interested in your
role as a curator and how you went about this role in this project. I have been
thinking recently about the importance of Szeeman in the late 60's and early 70's.
He came up with unique exhibitions that created a notion of the archetypal all-star,
curator-as-artist and the concept of the exhibition-as-art. The precedent set
then provided the groundwork for the "globe-trotting" all-star
curator who is not attached to a specific institution. In essence, some curators
are always in an airport traveling to their next big exhibition they are working
on they are departing from the curatorial groundwork they have just laid and attempting
to arrive at the next big thing before the rest of the fleet. The all-star international
curator has become a sort of institution in itself. Can you discuss how this relates
to the exhibition and your innovation to come up with such a unique concept for
an exhibition?

Rachel K. Ward: The curator is an important
role in contemporary art. Szeeman in particular was influential in his direction
of the Bachelor Machines in 1975. But you can go back even further to the Family
of Man Show from 1955 which was for an institution MoMa - by Edward Steichen.
The contemporary, freelancing curator is a lot more sexy than the original idea
of the curator as a guard of objects keeping them dust free or what have you.
But this is the nature of the machine. Art has changed to become more about the
rotating events that involve curators. A combination of these things led to my
pursuit of curating and especially working with Swiss curator Marc-Olivier Wahler.
Marc-Olivier, along with Szeeman, Hans-Ulirich Obrist and Bice Curiger, are leading
Swiss curators. There seems to already be a strong place for the curator in Swiss
culture. My experience with the Swiss Institute in New York encouraged me to pursue
projects like Eispavillon in Switzerland. But I think what is unique to Terminal
5 as a curator is the international space of the airport. The exhibition is thematic
and totally public and totally free of institutional association but it also already
has the international element which is today what every biennial aims for. And
finally, Terminal 5 is also a production of nothing - the theme is really about
travel and transition and things moving on to the next event which also captures
the current biennial and event trend of contemporary art. Terminal 5 is an event,
not exclusively an exhibition.

John Casey: I seem to have
struck something you feel passionately about.

Rachel K. Ward:
Yes, Terminal 5 is something for today and like its theme totally temporal. This
is also important, not that we don't have an institution to live up to but we
also don t have to leave something behind. We have to leave nothing behind because
the terminal will be closed and renovated and will never exist in its original
form again. It will disappear and that is really excellent. Instant history. Yet
the legacy we inherent, that of the role of site and the potential of art, that
will outlive this project and it is really that which we are working on for the
long term.

John Casey: But some people might argue that this
is precisely what is wrong with curating today. That the exhibiton has become
an event – transitory and quick, ultimately relating to our inability as
a culture to concentrate on anything except for a brief moment in time. I have
no problem with this, but the exhibition seems to be implicit in the showmanship
that the contemporary art world demands not only of its artists, but also now
from its curators. You need to have a Vanessa Beecroft performance, the fashion
icons of Tobias Wong and Toland Grinnell's trunks. In a sense it unabashedly participates
in the spectacular nature that is an inescapable element in the international
art world of short term exhibitions and the never-ending cycle of biennials. You
are of course aware of this problem and I am interested in what you think about
this, particularly in a time when academia has been saturated with Marxist theory
for so long. Rachel K. Ward: From the beginning, Terminal
5 has tried to involve a theoretical drive. At first look, it is another event
with some of the more popular artists in the scene. But the exhibition also brings
together some of the more critical and challenging artists in contemporary art.
Anri Sala, Dan Graham, Jenny Holzer and even Jonathan Monk or Sean Linezo and
not making art just for your pleasure. Terminal 5 also has a series of lectures
and a catalog with a section devoted to theory. It was important for the catalog
to be an alternative site for the exhibition. But I also didn't want to put together
something MIT would offer because then why not just let them do it. Essentially
I didn't want to be afraid of or fanatic about either fashion or Marxism. But
despite that, I imagine this project will have considerable critique for being
too set to please while other people will find it too theoretically conscious
of its context and discursive moment. I don't think there is an answer to how
to respond to the spectacle - to endorse or negate it. We are making the most
of existing resources and that is a certain responsibility often neglected in
the false consciousness of the spectacle. We now have, as Jean-Luc Nancy describes,
the freedom of the surprise event that comes only through thinking. It is in thinking
about existing resources that we found this surprise: a site, a group of artists
and ideas that were already in place and are now being brought to the public.
That is what Terminal 5 offers and its style is really subjective.
John Casey: Surveillance technologies are hot topics for both artists
and for the institutions and agencies controlling air travel. Artists are in the
interesting position to effectively and ineffectively address issues that relate
to surveillance technologies, most often, but not limited to video technologies,
so that at times they decode the meaning of a technology that so effectively disguises
its often oppressive and dehumanizing aspects. Artists and architects at their
best engage in a critique of surveillance structures and simulataneously enable
new relations to surveillance technologies. Artists often merely incorporate and
transform surveillance for art purposes, taking an uncritical approach and merely
appropriating surveillance technologies for uses other than security. How have
artist's in the exhibition dealt with these technologies? And are they critical
at all of these technologies?

Rachel K. Ward: Jennifer &
Kevin McCoy are making work about surveillance practices which is very interesting
because they began making work years ago about television which I think is in
some way a sort of mass surveillance. Sean Linezo's Staremaster is also related
to the act of surveillance. And then we also have Ken Courney's paparazzi work
- this is like the reverse of surveillance, the public obscenity of watching the
rich and famous out in the open. When you ask this question it is not like I can
describe a spy camera and a plasma screen where we have surveillance in art action.
Daniel Buren's Pompidou retrospective "The Museum That Did Not Exist"
was deliberate surveillance of his own exhibition and let people watch themselves
inside the Buren installations. It is usually more subtle. An artist is always
using surveillance. They often see things from a scope we cannot and that is what
they offer us, a different perspective.

John Casey: That is
what I mean by decoding the surveillance technology and simultaneously enabling
new alternative relations to these technologies. Rachel K. Ward:
Yes the artist does decode, or at least, re-code the message of surveillance.
I think one great example has been in planning the tunnel work with Ryoji Ikeda.
Ryoji has had a vision to make the tunnel white with such intense light that the
work cannot be looked at. With white vinyl flooring in a tunnel into white light
it says something about what the viewer is seeking with contemporary art or with
surveillance, to see something special, to have a revelation, or find the secret
answer, the sublime. It is the same desire from the beginning of art.

John Casey: In relation to the surveillance question, Nicholas Bourriaud
says "By putting technology in its productive context, by analyzing its relations
with the superstructure and the layer of obligatory behavior underpinning its
use, it becomes conversely possible to produce models of relations with the world,
heading in the direction of modernity. Failing which, art will become an element
of high tech deco in an increasingly disconcerting society. " I mention the
quote from Bourriaud because it seems that the showmanship of curators and the
gimmicks that run rampant in contemporary art end up in this category of high
tech deco. I find this to be an inescapable problematic and a difficult line for
both artist and curator to walk.

Rachel K. Ward: Showmanship
accompanies every field though art resides in an arena, in a site of congratulations
really, where we place special value on certain objects and individuals. But what
interests me more in the concept of high tech deco is the deco from decoration.
Decoration is the word of decadence and a difficult zone for high art. The idea
of high tech deco also makes me think of machines without something substantive
that can really move us. We still need beauty and substance in every era and ideally
the work of art can provide these things, with or without the curator.